Brodsky: Cuomo runs from both left, right

RICHARD BRODSKY

Published 7:16 pm, Sunday, June 30, 2013

The upheavals coming out of Washington are important and interesting in themselves. Supreme Court decisions about gay marriage, voting rights and affirmative action, the president's global warming initiative and the NSA snooping hoo-ha affect all of us. The stock market's downward slide and continuing economic insecurity are equally compelling.

But they also illuminate the political risks and benefits of Andrew Cuomo's "progractionary" politics.

After a couple of decades of unfocused and bizarre gubernatorial leadership, Cuomo has shown the virtues of decisive and strong-armed politics. This guy gets things done, when he wants to. And there's a method to his madness: He's a left-wing progressive on social issues, and a right-wing reactionary on economic issues. That is, a "progractionary."

For the left, he's smacked the state Senate upside the head and got gay marriage into law. He wants to close Indian Point, he's pulled back on hydrofracking, rushed through a gun control law, trumpeted electoral reform and a strong women's rights agenda. And he's investigating as many unpopular malefactors as he can find.

For the right, he's the austerity governor, cutting spending and creating no-tax zones, demanding that cities solve their problems without additional state aid, increasing corporate subsidies, changing labor laws and beating up unions.

This combination has kept him popular, and politically dominant in New York. But will it play beyond New York?

Here, Cuomo benefits from a disappearing Republican Party, massive fund-raising and a climate of fear. He will be comfortably re-elected next year. And he has his eye on the White House in 2016.

Much of the politics of 2016 are beyond even his powers of control, most notably Hillary Clinton's presumptive candidacy. He's a master of the mechanics of campaigns. But American presidential races are mostly about ideas and values, and Cuomo's set on a platform that's at best, high-risk.

In a Democratic primary against Vice President Joe Biden or Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland or Clinton if he dares, Cuomo would be betting on the support of an electorate made up of blocs of highly motivated single-issue voters. Gay rights voters, anti-nuke, anti-carbon, anti-fracking environmentalists, women's rights forces, government reform advocates and other interest groups are targets of opportunity for Cuomo — and rightly so.

In those same primaries will be voters and Democratic power centers like unions that are deeply skeptical about economic policies that fit in Chamber of Commerce brochures. It's not just that they haven't worked and have slowed down the Obama recovery. They contribute to income inequality and economic insecurity for the middle class.

The big bet Cuomo has made is that the combined weight of the interest groups gives him a critical mass of support that can beat back the traditional Democratic economic arguments. He's got friends in specific and powerful interest groups. He's got enemies in labor, and among those who focus on economic equity and sustainable growth. It's a zero-sum game, a win it or lose it strategy.

Cuomo's fate will largely depend on the objective state of the economy in 2016. People will be more receptive to the liberal social argument if they're not scared witless about their jobs. But give the man credit. He's thought about this and has a plan that will work, or won't. It will not be a close call.